On a late November night at Cleo's Bar & Grill on W. Chicago Ave., we convened a meeting of some of Chicago's finest basketball minds to discuss what's going on in Chicago hoops, starting with an extended conversation on the legacy and memories of Chicago's own Derrick Rose. This is a transcript of the conversation.

Evan Moore: Let’s get started tell us one by one who you are and what you do and we’ll get started from there.

Moore: All right, let’s get to it. What do you guys think is the legacy of Derrick Rose’s career?

McIntosh: I’ll kick it off. The legacy is set. His legacy was set after the MVP season. I’ll always go back to what my boy C4 (The Athletic contributor Chris Cason) told The Bigs, he said, he hollered at D-Rose right after that. He said he told him, it’s only downhill from here. That was real. That was some of the realest stuff I’ve ever heard. It’s sad what happened, but the legacy is set. D-Rose is definitely a Chicago legend. I hope he comes back sooner than later, because he can’t go out like that, man.

Crawford: I think Derrick Rose’s legacy is he brought the Bulls back. You’ve got Michael Jordan, you’ve got Derrick Rose. That’s really what it is. He didn’t make the Finals. He made the Eastern Conference finals. He won the MVP. Not only did he win it, he called it. You know what I’m saying? At the beginning of the season. We’ve never seen nothing like that. And people called him crazy and he went out there and did it. For a little while, the Bulls were legitimate contenders. And we thought Derrick was going to bring a championship to Chicago and he wanted to do that. The injuries derailed everything, but he’s the reason Chicago basketball came back and he’s the reason people started watching the Bulls again. I mean, his legacy, like Eugene said, his legacy is set in the city.

Smith: I’ll piggyback on both what Eugene and Bryan said. His legacy is cemented in Chicago, even going back to that press conference he had on media day for the Bulls, and I was there. I was kind of settling in and you know when you’re working, you’re trying to listen to everything, but when he said, “Why can’t I be MVP?” I think everybody in the room just looked up. You’re talking MVP? Really?

Crawford: With LeBron.

Smith: With LeBron, exactly. So for him to be able to do that and bring the Bulls back to prominence. Look at this kid, as a Chicagoan drafted No. 1 by his hometown team and be able to live up to those expectations before the injuries, that’s something, to me, you can’t really dilute or kind of minimize what that meant to the city, what that meant to a section of the city, especially the South Side. To give them more of an identity as well, as someone who’s from there, to represent Chicago not just even in the city or state or the country, but the world. And the Bulls, as an organization, that logo, that brand, is a worldwide brand obviously because of Michael Jordan, but at the same time, with him able to carry those expectations on his back and take and bring the Bulls back, rising from the ashes, is something you can never take away from him. I think when he gets older and as we get older and as he transitions from his basketball career, I think he’ll be more appreciated for what he was able to do in his career and the expectations he’s been able to live up to since what, middle school? Sixth, seventh grade?

McGhee: I agree that we, Chicago, his legacy is cemented. But there’s years after Chicago. There’s so much that’s happened since he’s been MVP. I remember being in high school and looking up to this guy as the point guard. Yes, he’s a Chicago dude, native from here, the Rose who grew from concrete. We know him as that, but outside of that, there’s other stuff he has to answer for. There’s a legacy after Chicago that isn’t that positive. His career in Chicago was great, but then the injuries after and then you start thinking about the court case and this other stuff, and it’s a little bit of a tainted legacy. So if he doesn’t come back to basketball and retires now, what does that mean? It’s totally different when you think about it.

Tomlin: Definitely. You spoke on his legacy after Chicago, but he definitely still has a legacy before Chicago [Bulls], man. When you talk about Derrick Rose, man, you go back to his Beasley days. Going into Simeon, then to Memphis, it’s crazy as it happened, to the Bulls. Everything from the Bulls getting that No. 1 pick, being so destined, from him to stay here and put on for this city, it’s just like a pretty crazy experience to have followed his career. Since he was a kid, you add on his accomplishments in the NBA, adding on an MVP and everything like that, and then how he fell out with the Bulls.

One of the first things comes to my mind when it comes to Derrick Rose is how did the Bulls mess up this relationship? Was it because of the injury or was it because of some of the politics things that everybody knows about now with GarPax [Gar Forman and John Paxson]. They ruin everything. Everybody knows that. That’s common knowledge, while we’re on the subject.

When you look at his legacy after the Bulls, I feel like it’s just a constant journey of trying to find his way. I think that probably all the way up until that injury, he was sure what his future was going to be. He was going to be one of the greatest players to ever play and he was going to do it for Chicago. Once that injury happened, everything got thrown up in the air and we see where we are even today. He’s away from the Cavaliers wondering what’s going on with his basketball career and that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing as a whole since he’s got hurt. Wondering what’s going to happen with him.

So as far as his legacy, I’m hoping he’s still got some writing to do. I’m hoping that his legacy is not cemented yet. I’m hoping he gets that championship. I’m hoping that he gets that contract, things along that line. But I think if it ended today, man, I think you’d have to say in his Chicago time he was the best player since M.J. The best player the Bulls have seen since M.J.

Crawford: And he was from here.

Tomlin: Straight from the South Side, put on for Simeon and all of that. And afterward, you just say, in some sense, it just kind of fell apart.

Moore: What did it mean for fans you’ve spoken to, whether in the barbershop or just hanging out, that a guy who was on the team was, basically as you say, he was from the crib? What did it mean either for yourself or people that you spoke to that they had a guy from Englewood on their team?

Crawford: Man, I’ll tell y’all a story. I was doing a story on Simeon after they won, I forget what championship they won. I remember Jabari Parker was a freshman.I’m sitting in the office talking to the kids one by one or whatever, I hear this commotion in the hallway. I turn around and look and Derrick Rose is standing in the office, in the school, in Simeon. You got kids coming out of their classrooms to come to the office because Derrick is in the building. This is the star for the Bulls and he’s back in his high school. He never like forgot where he was from.

I think for the people around Chicago, obviously you’re going to have critics, but where he was from and the people that knew him or knew of him or came where he came from, they all appreciated it. It’s going to always be that kind of love for Derrick Rose regardless of what’s said about him. That’s what people appreciated about him the most, he was so real. When he had that press conference with the shoes and he was crying about the stuff that was going on with Chicago, that was real. He came from that. When you look at him from that aspect, forget the athlete part of it, forget about him being a great basketball player. He was from, like you said, he was from Englewood, the South Side, where I’m from. Englewood, where people don’t make it out. In that respect, how people look at him, it’s going to always be love. It should always be love, if you ask me.

Jon Greenberg, The Athletic editor: Is it always going to be split, black and white, North Side, South Side? I’ve alway felt and I’ve talked to people about how they deal with Derrick, it’s always interesting how polarizing he is. I don’t think you can find a guy that polarizing.

McIntosh: Coming from me, I played high school basketball with Antoine Walker. It was almost the same thing, maybe not to the same extent, as far as the love from the people. That’s why 'Toine, to this day, [former Crane star and DePaul player] Lorenzo Thompson [said] “Toine was my idol.” D-Rose was the last one, since 'Toine, that was, correct me if I’m wrong somebody, the last Chicago All-Star.

Greenberg: Anthony Davis.

McIntosh: We don’t really know Anthony Davis. No disrespect to AD, we love AD. But we don’t [know] AD like that.

Crawford: That’s real.

McIntosh: But 'Toine, you could touch 'Toine. D-Rose, like he said, was at Simeon. These guys, we don’t know their lives, but most of those guys don’t come back to the hood. And I think people just don’t understand. D-Rose, people were so enamored with his basketball skill. It’s like do you know what we had to go through in the hood? Basketball is an outlet man. That’s nothing to put a ball in the bucket. You know what we had to go through in the hood.

Smith: I think there’s different options when you think about when you divide, especially Chicago because it is divided and will probably always be divided. When you think about North Side vs. South Side, and I’m from the West Side. The people who live in better parts, and the North Side isn’t all good, but in the better parts of the North Side, the more affluent, they can’t relate to riding the Red Line, or in my case, riding the 126 Jackson bus west and seeing two crack addicts get on the bus and start smoking crack on the bus. You can’t relate to that. So when you put it in that context and start thinking about again, what Gene said, what we have to go through to make it out.

We have to be twice as good or the options that are laid out in front of us. For me, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing for y’all as well, it was either play ball or be a professional athlete, want to be a professional athlete, or gang bang or sell drugs. Those were your only three options. That’s just being real. I tell kids all the time those are the options we have living in the city of Chicago, West Side, South Side, can’t forget about the East Side as well, but you don’t have as many options as people living on the North Side of Chicago have, or exposure to more resources with what they can do with their lives. I think that’s why we hold Derrick so close to our hearts, because we know we can touch him, he’s relatable, he does so much for the community that’s publicized or broadcast to the media or not. Because he doesn’t really care about that.

Crawford: To your point, I think Derrick represents a part of Chicago people look down on. They look at Derrick as this poor kid from the hood and next thing you know, he’s multi-millionaire basketball player. You’ll never hear the end of the SAT thing. Two hundred and fifty million dollars made and they still talking about it. That’s stupid.

McGhee: You don’t think that matters at all? You can't even get into college if you don't take this test.

Crawford: No. You can’t even make $250 million if you got a perfect on the SAT.

McGhee: Yes, you can. You can get a job. You can get something. We always use basketball as an outlet to go somewhere. I wasn't from Englewood. I just knew my best opportunity to go to college was playing basketball. So having the idea that just Derrick Rose can pass this test without taking this test, that says a lot. That’s saying, “South Side, you guys don't have to take this test.” But they're not Derrick Rose. They're not going to make $250 million, you're right. So what about those people who just want to go to college, but the only person they're looking at is Derrick Rose, who didn't take the test. Not that he failed the test, he didn't take.

Crawford: There’s one truth about life, is that the shit ain't fair. Rose is a great basketball player, right? That was his only way out. I’m not going to fault him for that. Guess what, you went to a regular high school, right? Where you learned math and English. He went to a fucking vocational school to change oil and weld.

McGhee: But people are going there for the idea of playing sports, that's what we look at Simeon as.

Crawford: OK, but that's a platform, that's a vehicle. Your platform is journalism. My platform is journalism. I’m gonna go somewhere and get a jump start on journalism. So if I’m an athlete, why not? Why wouldn’t I go some place that’s giving me a platform to where I want to go? I'm not trying to go to corporate America, I'm trying to go to the league.

McGhee: But you couldn't go to high school from the league.

Greenberg: He was the second class you couldn't [go to the league from high school].

McGhee: So he couldn't, that's what we're saying.

Crawford: He’s not going to college to become a scholar. He's going to college because he has to.

McGhee: There's a lot of people not going to college to become a scholar. You still have to pass this test. We know the rules aren’t fair, but there’s a rule in place. He got around this rule. You understand that. But other people aren’t going to get around this rule so I feel there’s a problem with you just ignoring this.

McIntosh: Like who? What other people? ‘Toine? Not to put ‘Toine…

McGhee: You don’t know any other basketball players that couldn’t get an 18 on the ACT?

McIntosh: Yeah, Antoine Walker couldn’t get an 18 on the ACT [Editor's note: ACT score unconfirmed]. He never passed the ACT.

Crawford: Kevin Garnett couldn't. They had to take a cumulative score.

McIntosh: And when we played, it was Prop 48. You had to have a 17. His score didn’t even equal that.

Tomlin: Look, the second time I took my SAT at Eisenhower, D-Rose was in that class. So for anybody who says he didn’t take the test, he was sitting right next to me and I was doing my answers, looking over at him. [laughs] The whole Simeon team was there.

Crawford: They was there.

Tomlin: But BC, everything you guys are discussing, how the rest of Chicago views South Siders, it came out when he got hurt. It came out when he did interviews and everybody wanted to call him stupid, because of the way he sounded. It came out he was nonchalant to the reporters and give them a silly answer. It came out when they wanted to talk about D-Rose for seemingly no reason and Josh, what you’re talking about came into play. Oh, he wasn’t smart enough to pass the ACT or SAT. Look, I took it three times.

McGhee: I took it twice.

Crawford: None of us made $250 million dollars.

Tomlin: None of us. And that’s another reason why we identify with [Rose] and where the split happened. He became ours, then he became everybody’s, the world's. Everybody didn’t like the edges. The rugged edges.

Derrick Rose takes a selfie with fans in 2015 in Guangzhou, China during one of his adidas promotional tours. Over the years, Rose was known for being generous with his time and his fans. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

McIntosh: I specifically know a couple of writers who don’t like him. My boy Joe Cowley [Chicago Sun-Times Bulls beat writer]. I don’t care ‘cause them my guys, but the shit Joe Cowley was saying [Editor's note: Cowley was critical of Rose in his coverage] when I first came up in there, I couldn’t believe it. Is this what y’all think? Are you jealous or what's the problem?

McGhee: That’s the problem. I think we just accept everything from Derrick Rose. We accept everything about his history.

McIntosh: That’s what I said earlier. Now we have to stop. Now it’s like, “I need time off.” Whether it’s because he’s hurt, he can’t stay healthy, or whether he’s having off-the-court issues, which he’s probably having both. We can’t keep capping for that. Either you’re here or you’re not. You’re taking the roster spot of someone who would be dying to make $500,000, so that’s my thing. Of course, I went to Beasley [elementary school], I’m D-Rose or nothing. But I agree with you. At some point…

Greenberg: I feel the same way. I always stuck up for him, but it's at the point where you got to play.

McIntosh: Hell yeah. If it is like “I can’t stay healthy,” then give it up, man. You're $200 million in and we know he don’t do shit with his money.

Smith: I think we started off with his legacy being cemented in Chicago, which it is. But again as you guys were saying, after that, OK, you’re good here, but you still have to be a professional. You have make sure you’re doing what other people are doing to make sure you’re a part of the team. And dealing with off-the-court issues. I think the bigger issue people aren’t talking about him is mentally what’s going on in his head. Taking absences from the team. He only talks to people he’s comfortable with. I’ve seen two sides of Derrick Rose. I’ve seen the side of Derrick Rose when it's cameras and media around, he’s more shy, he gives a few answers. I’ve seen the other side of Derrick Rose where he’s around people he knows and feels more comfortable with and he’s just like us right now, having a conversation. So I think he wants to put on a certain persona or face for different people, but I’m not going to disrespect him by saying, when people bring up the ACT stuff or he doesn’t speak well or doesn't say complete sentences well. I'm not going to disrespect him and say he's an idiot. That’s not it.

Greenberg: Bryan and I were there, especially during his MVP year. He was great. He was the best athlete for the media to deal with.

Smith: He would make time for everybody.

Crawford: I’ve seen him in media scrums for 10 minutes, get halfway out the door and someone would come grab him and he'd talk for 10 more minutes. I know Derrick Rose gets a bad rap about intelligence or whatever, but this dude is a avid reader. This dude reads a ton of books. I’ve seen him walk in on conversations in the locker room and correct people on what’s going on.

The public face of Derrick Rose has gotten people to view him in a certain way and there’s a handful of us who’ve gotten the chance to know him personally and say he’s not like that. People already have their minds made up.

I’m not going to hold Derrick Rose blameless. He's done a lot of things in his control that he didn’t have to do or he didn't have to say. But at the same time, I don’t fault him. Where I place fault is the people around him who allowed the situation to get to this point to where we have these conversations where this dude is thinking about his future. He doesn’t know what he's going to do. You can tell that it’s not about the money anymore. He just wants to play basketball. It would be tragic like if that he finally discovers his love for the game and now he can’t play it anymore. That’s where I’m at with it. It was the fastest arc I’ve ever seen of any professional athlete ever, that was a superstar, except maybe like Gale Sayers. That's the only one I can compare to.

McIntosh: When it became work, a job and not fun anymore…

McGhee: That's what happens with athletes. You play in high school, you go to college and you start realizing this is a job. And when you actually get paid to do it, it's a counterpoint, you made it to MVP, now you’re injured. You already got the money you need. Now you’re playing basketball. It’s not just fun anymore. You have to do it every single day.

McIntosh: Not even that, it’s the injury part that made it not fun anymore. Now you have to get up and go through rehab to get up a six in the morning. He was probably waking up and doing whatever and going out and getting 30.

Tomlin: Another aspect with D-Rose is that he didn’t start getting hurt until he won the MVP.

Smith: Throughout his high school career, he had a bum ankle. People try to throw this mentally weak title on him. When comes to rehabbing and getting back to a level where for an athlete in the NBA. You can’t be mentally weak to rebound after injury after injury. I saw Isaiah Thomas’ documentary where he’s doing “The Book of Isaiah,” he has more appreciation for athletes who’ve gone through significant or major injuries and have worked themselves back, because those guys are tough. It takes a lot of work, commitment and sacrifice to get yourself back to playing where you feel like you’re comfortable.

Crawford: Last night, I was talking to Tyson Chandler and he was saying, the average person doesn’t even understand, forget an injury, you don’t even understand what an athlete has to go through just to be able to play. After a game, you might see a dude wrapped up from feet to knee in ice. You see a dude with a TENS unit firing up their muscles. There's a lot of things these dudes go through just to be able to play basketball, no injury or nothing, just stay healthy and be able to play.

When you get hurt, and not even a sprained ankle, I'm talking about when they cutting on you, when you have a major surgery, the ACL now, that's a whole different everything. You're not even playing basketball no more. Your whole day to day grind is getting your knee right. You're not doing nothing with a basketball, you're not doing nothing. That just adds on.

The conversation then segued into the current iteration of the Bulls. On Monday, we'll run the second part of this roundtable, featuring plenty of talk about the Bulls, high school basketball and first-person stories of basketball greatness.